Enable or Disable Hibernate in Windows 10

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Hibernate is a power-saving state designed primarily for laptops, and might not be available for all PCs (PCs with InstantGo don't have the hibernate option). While sleep puts your work and settings in memory and draws a small amount of power, hibernation puts your open documents and programs on your hard disk to the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys), and then turns off your computer. Hibernate uses less power than sleep and when you start up the PC again, you’re back to where you left off (though not as fast as sleep). Use hibernation when you know that you won't use your laptop or tablet for an extended period and won't have an opportunity to charge the battery during that time.

This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable hibernate and restore or delete the hiberfil.sys file in Windows 10.

You must be signed in to Windows as an administrator to be able to do the steps in this tutorial.

If you disable hibernate, hibernate will no longer show in the Power menu.

Tip

Fast startup requires that hibernate be enabled. If you only want to use fast startup and don't plan on using hibernate, then you can specify the hiberfile type as reduced to significantly reduce the size of the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys) to about half of its full size.

B) Check your advanced power options to make sure that the Critical battery action and Low battery action settings under Battery are not set to Hibernate, and go to step 5 below. (see screenshot below)

This step will disable hibernation, disable fast startup, delete the hiberfil.sys file, and remove the Hibernate afterpower option under Sleep.

A) Type in 0 (zero), and click/tap on OK. (see screenshot above)

B) Check your advanced power options to make sure that the Critical battery action and Low battery action settings under Battery are not set to Hibernate, and go to step 7 below. (see screenshot below)

7. Close regedit, and restart the computer to apply the changes.

8. If you enabled hibernate and would like to have hibernate turned on, then you could do step 2 in OPTION FOUR below.

Help! this is a great guide, but I was under the false impression (my own fault) that I needed to restore the Hibernate option when I didn't need to.

I ran the Enable Hibernate.reg file (option 2), and now the battery icon on my computer is not showing. Also, in power options, it no longer shows the separate options for when the computer is plugged in and when it's on battery.
Instead, there is only one option for choosing when the computer sleeps/turns of display (as opposed to one option for choosing when it sleeps/turns off display when plugged in, and one option for choosing when it sleeps/turns off display when on battery).

How do I undo the changes that the .reg file made? Or is something else the problem?

Please help!

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Initially, I restarted the computer about 2 or so times. It didn't work, so I started to panic (hence my previous post).
But this morning, my mom turned on the computer, and the battery icon is showing again.

Maybe it's the difference between a restart and turning the PC off and then on?

Initially, I restarted the computer about 2 or so times. It didn't work, so I started to panic (hence my previous post).
But this morning, my mom turned on the computer, and the battery icon is showing again.

Maybe it's the difference between a restart and turning the PC off and then on?

Hey , Smooshie! Can't tell much from your system specs (need to update them, really helps), but check your BIOS settings. If you have S4-S5 enabled, disable them. Take it back to S3. Sleep and Hibernate will behave better.

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Hey , Smooshie! Can't tell much from your system specs (need to update them, really helps), but check your BIOS settings. If you have S4-S5 enabled, disable them. Take it back to S3. Sleep and Hibernate will behave better.

Hi f14tomcat, thanks for the advice. If it helps, added my system specs

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